I have 18 pairs of the same sock. I found that the most efficient way. YMMV.
Isn't this making it especially more complex because now you have to match based on wear, not just the pattern? With different patterns it's easier as the wear is constant for each pair. OCD mileage may vary :)
How to pair socks from a pile efficiently?
31–40 of 42 posts
Re: How to pair socks from a pile efficiently?
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't this making it especially more complex because now you have to match based on wear, not just the pattern? With different patterns it's easier as the wear is constant for each pair. OCD mileage may vary :)
If you really had OCD, you would always do laundry, pull the contents of your sock drawer forward, put clean socks at the back, and only take socks from the front. Problem solved.
Re: How to pair socks from a pile efficiently?
#33I have 18 pairs of the same sock. I found that the most efficient way. YMMV.
That breaks down in the world of finance:)
For some reason, it was decided that people would be judged based on the socks that they wear.
I guess when you have to wear a suite each day you need to differentiate yourself and after a watch socks are the next best way?
Re: How to pair socks from a pile efficiently?
#34Give the pile to a toddler. A lot can be learnt from sorting and hanging the daily washing with a young child, on both sides.
Re: How to pair socks from a pile efficiently?
#35https://hn.algolia.com/?q=how+to+pair+socks#!/story/forever/...
The most recent repost was over a year ago, but not by much.
Re: How to pair socks from a pile efficiently?
#36Re: How to pair socks from a pile efficiently?
#37Re: How to pair socks from a pile efficiently?
#38No one owns enough socks of enough different kinds to make the accepted solution the most efficient. It's much easier to simply try for a match on an unmatched sock, and if there is no match put that sock into cache (usually somewhere else on the bed). Your cache will probably never get above about 8 socks without a match.
Not sure if you're making a legitimate YAGNI argument, or falling into a programmer fallacy of believing you can safely generalize from your own experience to your users...
I'm leaning towards the latter, and am further going to suggest that your experience might be limited to being single, and likely male, and that it generalizes badly on any axis away from that state.
This problem feels like a surprisingly good example of how your personal intuitions about a problem space can lead you to make incorrect simplifying assumptions to find an elegant solution, that will completely fail when they run into the real needs of your actual users.
Re: How to pair socks from a pile efficiently?
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. O(1) FTW!
This would be O(n), since the time it takes to pair your socks is still proportional to the number of socks you have
Re: How to pair socks from a pile efficiently?
#40No one owns enough socks of enough different kinds to make the accepted solution the most efficient. It's much easier to simply try for a match on an unmatched sock, and if there is no match put that sock into cache (usually somewhere else on the bed). Your cache will probably never get above about 8 socks without a match.
"No one owns enough socks of enough different kinds" Not sure if you're making a legitimate YAGNI argument, or falling into a programmer fallacy of believing you can safely generalize from your own experience to your users... I'm leaning towards the latter, and am further going to suggest that your experience might be limited to being single, and likely male, and that it generalizes badly on any axis away from that s…